January highlights: January 20 - Shinnenkai (New Year's Party) at Marie's (part 1)

In Japan, people go to yearend parties (忘年会, bonenkai) at the end of the year, and New Year parties (新年会, shinnnenkai) at the beginning of the year. The common Japanese is said to go to a number of bonenkais and shinnenkais every year; but as non-Japanese, we don't really get a chance to take part in such gatherings.

So, I'm lucky enough to score

bonenkai: 1

shinnenkai: 1

This post is about our shinnenkai at Marie's house

We met at Starbucks near Chuo station because none of us knew where Marie's house was

We started off with hot pot. It was seriously so delicious that it was hard to stop eating. Marie's mom (standing up) is a genius (find out why later)

This was when we were playing a game where we whisper phrases in people's ears and see whether the last person would be able to recognize what the original phrase was supposed to be. Since the nine of us (Marie, Atsushi, Mandy, Trisha, Faiz, Donican, Tienchi, Zhao, and me) didn't share a common lingua franca, the game turned out to be really interesting. We tried passing around phrases in English, Chinese, and Japanese, but the funniest was when

温故知新 (onkochishin, learning from the past) became onkukushin
and
normative shift became no man in shore

If laughing could burn calories, we probably burned some serious calories that day :D

Here's a shot of Donican (you're in the shot anyway so you should've just joined in :P), Mandy (Trisha's friend who's visiting from Taiwan), and Trisha (I forgot why you're holding your cellphone under your chin...)

Here, we are unwinding after dinner and preparing to fill our 別バラ (betsubara, literally "separate stomach") with sweets